KQED's Forum

Two California scientists, David Julius from UCSF and Ardem Patapoutian from San Diego's Scripps Research, have won the 2021 Nobel Prize for medicine. In their work, which focuses on the biology of our senses, Julius and Patapoutian identified receptors that allow the cells in your body to sense touch and temperature. Their findings hold potential medical applications for better treatment of chronic pain. We talk with the prize-winning researchers about their work.

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Not many people get a backstage pass to history, but Ben Fong-Torres has. As a writer and music editor for Rolling Stone magazine, Fong-Torres stood at the center of an era of rock and roll from which acts like Bob Dylan, The Doors, the Grateful Dead and Elton John emerged, and his writing was so revered by musicians that Fong-Torres was often the only journalist bands would talk to. A new documentary by Suzanne Joe Kai taps into Fong-Torres’ personal archives and includes interviews with him as well as some of his famous subjects to tell the story of how Fong-Torres, the Bay Area-born son of Chinese immigrants, found himself in the middle of the cultural zeitgeist. We’ll talk to Fong-Torres about the film, which will be shown at the upcoming Mill Valley Film Festival. 

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During a recent Los Angeles Dodgers game, three people sprinted across the field waving banners with the names of former neighborhoods -- Bishop, La Loma and Palo Verde -- that were razed on the land that is now home to the team’s stadium. The protest was an attempt to call attention to a piece of L.A. history known as the Battle of Chavez Ravine, when in the 1950s city officials displaced roughly 1,800 mostly Mexican American families from the area. Officials promised to build a new public housing complex where the families could live, but instead sold the land to the Dodgers to build a stadium. We talk about that history and Mexican Americans’ deep and complicated relationship with the team.

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During the past decade, widespread optimism for what technology could accomplish turned into a backlash against Silicon Valley and what it has spawned. Social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter hold enormous power over our economies and lives, but nobody is quite sure how to rein in the companies. In their new book, “System Error: Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot,” three Stanford University professors from different fields spell out exactly what has gone wrong and offer ideas to hold the powerful accountable in meaningful ways.  

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It's been 30 years since Anita Hill testified before an all-male Senate Judiciary Committee during Clarence Thomas's Supreme Court confirmation hearing, describing how he sexually harassed her in the workplace. Anita Hill joins us to reflect on that experience, which she says laid bare the systemic faults in a confirmation process that still casts doubt on the credibility of women, and to talk about her new book "Believing: Our Thirty-Year Journey to End Gender Violence."

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A pipeline leak first reported on Saturday has spilled at least 126,000 gallons of crude oil into the Pacific, washing up on the shores of Huntington Beach and contaminating the area's environmentally sensitive wetlands and marshes. While the leak has been stopped, clean-up efforts are just getting underway. We'll talk about the effects of the oil spill and its impacts on the Huntington Beach community and environment.

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What do a bicycle, a living room sofa, spools of copper wire, and a six-pack of Cherry Vanilla Coke Zero have in common? All of them may soon be or currently are in short supply as the global economy experiences a supply chain in disarray that has left few consumer goods and commodities untouched. Ships backed up and waiting to dock in California ports, containers that wait for trucks or trains to deliver them, and warehouses that lack enough labor to unpack those containers – all contribute to the bottlenecks in the supply chain that threaten to leave store shelves empty. With the holidays around the corner, some retailers, like Costco, are hiring their own ships to help deliver goods. We’ll look into what is causing these supply chain issues and how they might be resolved in the near- and long-term future.

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Join us for a roundup of political news in California. Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed numerous bills into laws in the past few weeks including a slew of laws aimed at increasing affordable housing, a new requirement for disclosing policy misconduct records, and changes to the state’s conservatorship law known as the #FreeBritney bill. We’ll take a look at what legislation is moving forward and other political news.

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The San Francisco Giants have clinched a spot in the playoffs for the first time since 2016. With 105 wins under their belt, the 2021 team is among the best in the franchise’s history, and have a serious shot at beating the Los Angeles Dodgers for the division title. With the end of the season in sight, the team could soon be reliving the glory days of their championship victories in the 2010s. We’ll talk about what has contributed to the Giants’ successful run and what to expect from the playoffs.

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Drug company Merck is applying for emergency use authorization in the U.S. for a new oral treatment for COVID-19 that trials suggest cuts the risk of hospitalization or death by half. We'll talk with UCSF's Dr. Monica Gandhi about the promising new treatment, get the latest coronavirus numbers for the Bay Area, and hear what to expect now that flu season is around the corner.

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